


Costs

by zeldadestry



Category: L.A. Confidential (1997)
Genre: Community: 100_women, Drabble Sequence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-09
Updated: 2009-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:02:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coating her lips in red, the mask returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Costs

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 092, "Closed", for 100_women fanfic challenge

Pierce was first. It was almost clinical, he had to break her in and make sure she knew what she was doing. He had to teach her, so she'd be worth all the money he was going to charge her clients. "You're lucky," he told her. "Because you've only ever fucked for cash, it will make it easier on you. You won't know what you're missing."  
Less than a year later he stood, drunk and expectant, on her doorstep. "Only if you pay me double," she declared.  
His hands cupped her breasts. "Don't you want me?"  
"No."  
He paid triple.

 

She hated his narrow face. Eyes always cold, he kept his hand pressed against her mouth when he was above her and clutched at her throat when he was behind her. "Don't make me see Smith again," she begged Pierce. "He's cruel."  
He put down his cigar without lighting it. "I'll see what I can do."  
"Please."  
He ran a hand gently up and down her arm, a compensation for rough treatment she should have found insulting, but she leaned against him. "I'll tell him you liked it. He won't ask for you again."  
"You're a good man," she lied.

 

"Did you ever do that before?" Susan asks, afterwards, as they sit side by side at a restaurant counter near closing time, cups of coffee in front of them because they both have midnight appointments. She leans in closer when Lynn doesn't answer, whispers. "Two women together?"  
"Sometimes it's three."  
"It felt wrong, somehow," Susan says, pouring more sugar in her cup. "How many men do you think were watching behind the glass?"  
Finished, Lynn pulls out lipstick and a compact. Coating her lips in red, the mask returns. "One man or a million, we gave them quite a show."

 

She loves best to hide away with Bud in the afternoons; the sun shines into the bedroom so brightly, like on Adam and Eve in their garden. He's fallen into sleep, curled up beside her, and each of his long exhales tickles her cheek as it sweeps across the sensitive skin. She closes her eyes and imagines what it would be like to lose all memory between now and when she wakes. When she comes into this room she discards Veronica Lake, longs to turn that abandonment from temporary into permanent, but could anything resurrect the girl she once was?

 

"You can't keep getting into fights. In a small town you can't avoid the men you've angered. This is a place where people have nothing better to do than remember the ways they've been wronged." She will never say: you're not as strong as you were, Bud, not as young. "All men have limits. Do you have to keep testing yours?" He does not speak, does not move, but when she leans in over him and wraps her arms around his shoulders, he drops his chin down to rest on her hands. "Try," she whispers, holding him closer, "for me."


End file.
